


Who Only Stand and Wait

by gwyneth rhys (gwyneth)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Drunken Confessions, Friendship, Gen, Hanging Out, Male-Female Friendship, Secrets, girls night, keeping vigil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-12
Updated: 2012-07-12
Packaged: 2017-11-09 20:34:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/458095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwyneth/pseuds/gwyneth%20rhys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki and Pepper hang out, keeping vigil while the Avengers fight evil.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Who Only Stand and Wait

The strangest thing about Loki’s arrival, aside from the swirling purple cloud of sparkles, Pepper Potts thinks, is that he came to the front door. Well, the elevator, technically, but it’s the intent that counts. But of course, JARVIS hadn’t alerted her to him entering the building, so she assumes he teleported there. Usually he just appears, when you least expected or wanted him to, and after all these years with Tony Stark, she doesn’t like surprises anymore. Trickster god, indeed. 

She sets him to fixing drinks while she checks on the heating appetizers from her favorite restaurant, following the chef’s instructions about putting everything together to the letter. As long as she keeps the cold things cold and the hot things hot, they should be good to go. Over her shoulder, Pepper says, “So, you can do magic and shape shift. Can you magically shape-shift me into someone who can cook?” 

He glides up beside her and hands her a drink, what he calls an Asgardian Twilight, but he will never tell her what’s in it, even though it’s really really good. And powerful -- two of them and she’s almost on the floor. Four will even knock Tony into a coma. When her eyes meet his, he’s smiling, though like most of his smiles, she can’t tell if he’s truly happy or it’s a death’s-head grin masked by the gleaming white Chiclet teeth. But they’re good acquaintances now, so she’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.

“If you like, I can endow you with such powers. But one must always remember that magic has consequences one can’t foresee.” His smile falters for a second, his eyes seem distant, and then it’s back, and he says, “I’ve learnt that the hard way.”

Pepper puts her hand on his very nicely muscled shoulder and says, “Loki, I was kidding. I don’t need magic.”

That makes him blush and drop his head. When he’s sheepish he appears so vulnerable; she only wants to hug him. Well, she _has_ hugged him, many times by now, and he’s even at a point where you don’t have to check with him first to do it, but it’s probably never going to be a thing most of the SHIELD team will ever accept. Though when it comes down to it, they treat Phil Coulson like crap, too, and Pepper adores him. No one believes Loki can ever be trusted, not completely -- in some ways, she thinks not even Thor fully trusts Loki, despite how much Thor loves him. Tony prefers to bring up the “almost destroyed the world” issue whenever he can.

“So, I have a couple of my favorite movies queued up -- um, romantic comedies this time, I promise no more historical dramas full of anachronistic details -- and if we finish off the appetizers we could probably do popcorn, or...well, do you have something you’d like? You always let me pick.”

“Nonsense. You cannot have an always when we’ve done this only two times.” 

“So precise!” Pepper blows him a raspberry and he kind of steps back, bewildered at this noise. “But listen to you, with the contractions and everything. You’re really settling in!” Not that he looks like any other man on the planet -– just as Thor stands out, so does Loki, with his fabulous, gleaming Marlo Thomas ‘70s flip hair and his visionary eyes, the skin so pale it’s like he’s luminescent.

He’s so handsome tonight: when he dresses mortal, he’s immaculate and exquisitely tailored in his perfect Etro charcoal narrow-leg trousers with a perfect break, his perfect forest-green Dolce & Gabbana shirt so dark it looks almost black, and his perfect John Lobb charcoal suede oxfords. She knows all the labels because she went shopping with him. When it came time to pay, he was all set to teleport out with his bounty, but Pepper had chided him with a “this is what we _do_ , and anyway it’s Tony’s money, which he loves to spend recklessly on fine things.”

“I have no doubt that I am not the fine thing you refer to,” Loki had teased, and at the time she’d wondered what he meant. 

Tonight, though, he was supposed to be casual -- she had texted him, “We’ll hang out while they’re off saving the world again, OK? Dress casual! No uniforms,” but of course here he is, making her feel like a slob in her leggings and oversized sweater and bare feet. Norse god casual, sigh. At least he hadn’t worn a tie.

“Are they...chick flicks?” His brow furrows as he recalls the phrase. He’s absorbed so much of the culture since he came back from Asgard with Thor. Things have changed drastically, too, in that time -- the Avengers Initiative no longer in hiding and doing their work when they’re needed, Thor and Loki choosing to stay here most of the time, Thor even taking the first tentative steps of building a relationship with Jane, contrary to what everyone thinks he should do. Now that the team’s here in the building, minus Thor, because, well, Loki, it feels like summer camp. Pepper’s working on getting others to accept the idea of Loki’s presence, but it’s a little bit like trying to break up a fight between Kodiak bears.

But it’s got to be hard for Loki. He and Thor are working so hard at being brothers, but part of the problem has always been that Thor doesn’t really _see_ Loki, and when Loki’s left behind while they all go off being superheroes, Loki doesn’t really know what to do with himself. He’s got to want to contribute to the chaos, she thinks. But he doesn’t. Loki tries to stay out of it, stay in the clear, and that’s got to be like an addict going cold turkey. Even helping SHIELD out might make him feel more useful, but no one’s truly ready for that. Especially Phil, who -- totally understandably -- is quite cautious and wary about anything to do with Loki.

The first time she and Loki got together when everyone was gone, Pepper made sure to tell Tony after the fact, and only then after he’d had a few drinks. Phil had adamantly warned her against it, but Pepper thought it was time to try a different tack. Not that she wasn’t more than a little bit scared of him back then, but he seemed to connect to her in ways he didn’t with the others, Thor had explained in his stilted, courtly way. It might have been that she was a woman -- because she noticed he behaved almost competitively with many of the guys -- but it also might simply have been that Pepper was the kind of woman who believed in second chances.

The second time SHIELD was off battling evil, Tony had returned to find them in the office area, Pepper showing Loki the new green technology Tony’d been working on. Loki made a quick, formal bow, apologized to her for his hasty departure, and vanished before Tony could get any jibes in. Dismayed, Pepper had launched into him hard, probably their first real blowup since they’d gotten together. She imagined Loki enjoyed that, though, and had watched them argue from some higher plane.

But tonight they sip their drinks quietly, just listening to the music playing in the background, when the timer on the oven beeps loudly and startles her. For reasons Pepper can’t even fathom, maybe she’s still just a little nervous with him even after all this time, she grabs the tray with a bare hand, and yelps in pain, dropping everything and hissing as she turns on the cold water. Loki grabs her hand and it instantly cools, the redness disappearing before her eyes.

Pepper looks at him, his eyes so tender and sad, and then down at their hands, and realizes that his skin has turned blue. “Wh--“ she starts to say, and just as quickly Loki’s skin appears normal again, so she shakes her head in disbelief. “What did you do?”

“Just a little trick,” he says ruefully, and Pepper knows it’s a lie, but he’s not going to tell her anything different. 

Flexing her hand, she glances up at him again and then smiles, leans over, and kisses him on the cheek. A giggle escapes Pepper’s mouth when she sees how quickly and heavily he blushes. “Arg, I’ve ruined our munchies.” She bends over to pick them up off the floor -- appetizers from Gramercy Tavern should never be wasted -- to see if anything can be salvaged.

“Really?” Loki asks, and wiggles his fingers. The duck liver mousse on toast, the baked clams, reappear on the baking sheet, perfectly fine, sitting on the counter. So she grabs the cold appetizers from the fridge and plops everything on a tray.

“Come on, Sandra Bullock awaits.”

“We’re having someone else?” He’s distinctly disappointed, and Pepper laughs.

“No, she’s the star of both our chick flicks.” She hurls herself onto the sofa, asks JARVIS to pull up the screen and turn on the projector. Loki has been gentlemanly and carried both their drinks and the food in and sets it all down on the coffee table. He even slides a coaster under each drink. She really appreciates that in a man. Tony is the very definition of mess, and Pepper has such a vastly overdeveloped sense of responsibility that the alchemy of what made them a couple always amazes her.

“Star.” He’s perplexed again. While he’s absorbed way more of “Midgard” culture -- she always feels like that’s some sort of slight to humans, like they’re middle of the road -- than Thor has, modern American lingo and pop culture continues to stymie him. Loki does love the Internet, though, so Pepper imagines he will be caught up in no time.

“People who act in the movies or TV are said to be starring in them. Hence, they are movie stars or TV stars. And no, I have no idea where that came from.” Pepper shifts next to him, something she knows he’s not totally comfortable with but she doesn’t care. 

The movie begins; they start with _While You Were Sleeping,_ and Pepper stuffs an appetizer in her mouth and hands one to Loki. He doesn’t eat enough, and it worries her. Everyone else thinks she’s nuts for worrying about a god of mischief and chaos, but she can’t help it. Sometimes when he’s not aware, his eyes get cloudy and moist, especially when he watches Thor when Thor’s having a good time with other people.

“Why is she in that tiny cage?” he asks about Sandra’s character’s job as a token taker on the Chicago El, and so she begins this evening’s Introduction to Human Customs 101. Each time they’ve watched something, Pepper’s used it as an educational opportunity. Loki’s both fascinated and repulsed by human culture, and honestly, if you asked Pepper, that’d probably be her reaction too. Nearly every scene will be followed by questions: Why is she placing decorative items on a tree inside her home? Why would a dead fir tree symbolize a savior’s birth celebration? and so on. He does, however, like Sandra Bullock quite a bit. Who wouldn’t?

At one point, Loki turns his gaze on her and asks, “Have you informed Stark that I was joining you tonight?” He’ll never call him Tony, no matter how many times they’ve spoken.

“Yep. This time, in fact, I told him when he left, and he didn’t even flinch. Although I’m fairly certain there was a twitch in one of his eyelids, but I can’t prove it because he was putting his helmet on.”

She catches him looking at the clock a couple of times when the movie plays on. It’s no use telling him not to worry about them, because she has the same fears and clock-watching obsession. Phil would call if Tony couldn’t. Pepper’s sure of that. She thinks.

“Are you not concerned for his safety?” he finally says. “If Thor is correct, this Doom creature is rather formidable.”

“Every bit as much as you’re concerned for Thor’s.” Pepper gives him a pointed stare, but he doesn’t react, just nods slightly. Arg. She’ll never be able to get him to admit it.

“I know they are competent, but so are their enemies. It’s difficult to merely sit by, doing nothing.” He crosses one long leg over the other and fiddles with the hem of his pants. 

“They also serve who only stand and wait,” Pepper says quietly. 

“Ah, Milton,” he acknowledges with a soft smile. “Lovely writing.”

“Of course you’d know that. England’s prime minister quoted it in a speech during World War Two, about the civilian population. I guess we’re the civilians here.” She studies him for a while, his nervous fingers, always doing something, the haunted look in his lovely blue-green eyes, and says, “You want to be in on it, don’t you? With Thor. In spite of everything.”

It’s not precisely a deflection when he goes to the bar to make new drinks, not even really avoidance, but just some time to think of the right answer -- something he does. Loki’s never ever talked about his feelings before, but the family therapy that he’s been pushed into here on Earth has taught him that feelings aren’t the enemies he’s always thought they were. And Thor’s slowly learning that Loki has feelings deeply different from Thor’s own, possibly one of their biggest hurdles, because Thor’s a bit thick when it comes to Loki’s personality. He brings back two Pernods with water, which she introduced him to once at dinner out and he quite enjoyed -- he loves absinthe, too -- and sets them down, pushes up next to her on the sofa, and allows her to snuggle into his side. “I have hope that perhaps one day my brother and I can fight again, side by side.”

They focus back on the movie, and after a while, Pepper realizes that this story may not be the best one she could have chosen. It may be a romantic comedy, but one brother is in a coma, and the other brother is falling in love with Sandra despite thinking she belongs to his sibling. So Pepper glances over at him and yep, sure enough, his face is strained and his eyes look misty. 

“Do you want me to turn it off?” she asks gently. 

Turning toward her, he says quietly in that honeyed voice, “I always knew in my heart he would prevail.”

Pepper looks at the screen, then back to Loki. “You mean Peter Gallagher? Or Bill Pullman?”

That actually provokes a laugh from him. He really ought to laugh more often; it’s a lovely sound when he’s not cackling maniacally, just really laughing. “My brother.”

“Oh.” Pepper honestly doesn’t know what to say to that. So she says nothing at all, and puts her arm around him. “Oh, honey.”

He pats her shoulder ineffectually. Wow, he’s got a long way to go in the personal contact area. “I am, as you say, fine.”

Pulling back, Pepper stares intently at him and says, “Look, I don’t want to get in your face about this, but, I mean, have you told Thor how you feel about him, the good, the bad, and the ugly? If I can actually tell Tony how I feel about him, believe me, you can tell your brother. Trust me, Thor isn’t even half as obtuse and avoidy as Tony when he doesn’t want to talk about something.”

He downs his drink, eats some more, and says, “If it pleases you, then I will consider it.” 

Pepper wiggles her fingers at him and makes grabby hands. “It pleases me! More drinkies, please. Can I have another Asgardian Twilight?”

After a few minutes, Loki brings her back a drink and it’s sparkling. Literally -- he’s done something that makes it shoot off small sparks. She squeals, and he smiles. “I suppose that was rather undignified, wasn’t it?” she asks.

They continue. At least there’s a happy ending to the movie, even if Pepper wonders about it doing something to his fragile emotional stability. After all, she’s the only one who actually believes she’s safe alone with him.

“The next one is better -- there are brothers, but there’s no big drama with them. It’s mostly about a competent, smart woman who works for a ridiculous billionaire playboy who doesn’t fully appreciate her hard work.”

“Something of an autobiography, then?”

“Almost.” She pulls up the movie, but before she waves her hand at the play button, she asks him, “Why did you send the destroyer after him, if you believed he would prevail?”

It’s like a part of him is peeling away, transparent onion skin sloughing off layer by layer. Loki sighs raggedly. “I wish I could--“

JARVIS cuts into the conversation. “Miss Potts, a call from Mr. Stark.”

She looks up at the ceiling and says, “You’re all right?”

Tony’s voice booms over the comm system. “Right as acid rain -- geez, some of those former Iron Curtain countries suck. Coal-fired plants everywhere, towns covered in soot, trees dying, polluted water... We gotta get some cleanup going over there soon. Vixen still there?” He’d taken to calling Loki by the names of Santa’s team in _Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer._

“Yes, and he can hear you.”

“No offense, Lok!” Tony says cheerfully. Pepper is getting drunk enough that she doesn’t even care. “ETA twelve minutes. Any food left? What are we watching?”

“Yes, there’s food, and we’re watching _Two Weeks Notice_.”

“Oh, you know I love me some Sandy and I can’t resist a good thinly veiled mockery of our working relationship, but I think Fury’s on the other line about debriefing. Heading back to SHIELD. See you in a few hours.”

“I know perfectly well you’re going to eat shawarma with everyone else to avoid coming home,” Pepper says, exhausted affection trickling into her voice.

“It’s a tradition. I’m superstitious enough not to mess with tradition.”

“Goodbye, my love, my liar,” Pepper says, even though she knows he’s probably already disconnected. “JARVIS, you know what would be fun? If you cut Mr. Stark’s power for half a second. Just give him a good jolt.”

“I probably shouldn’t, Miss Potts,” the AI responds. “His suit is running on one-tenth power.” She sighs.

“You are better than he deserves,” Loki says to her, and she beams at him. Some of it is the alcohol, some of it is just knowing that she’d connected to him, gotten through the walls and safeguards he’d put up. 

“I know!” she responds with great cheer.

“Why do you love him?” Loki asks, leaning closer, as if he can absorb her feelings by breathing them in. Geez, he smells good, like leather and Oriental lilies. Do all gods smell that good? She’d never noticed any particular aroma on Thor.

“Do you mean, why do I love _him_ specifically, or why does one human love anyone else?”

“Both.” He watches her intently now, and there’s a small, crystalline shiver of fear running up her spine, wondering if he’s looking for a vulnerability to exploit. But they’re friends now, right?

“I guess I just... Well, Tony plucked me out of obscurity at his company, and I got to know him, and then I became his assistant, and the more I was around him, the more I felt for him. It’s just chemicals and emotions and things like that. I like who Tony is, character flaws and all. And I think he feels the same way about me.” She peers intently at Loki. “Does that mean you don’t have relationships up there, then? Did you, like, have a girlfriend or...goddessfriend? Surely you have relationships, if you’re having children and building families and marrying.”

He grins wickedly. OK, she can see how that can be scary for people. “A gentleman is never indiscreet.”

“Ah, but you’re not a gentleman,” Pepper throws back at him.

Which only serves to make him laugh. “Yes, you are so very correct.” He considers for a moment before saying, “All right. Yes, I have had a...girlfriend, as you call it. Other types of relationships. But we don’t do things quite the same way in Asgard. Things are more, shall we say, fluid there.”

“Oh, you’re such a tease! You never speak in specifics. I looked you up in the mythology. Which I guess isn’t really a total myth, is it? But you’ve been different creatures, even a different sex.”

To her surprise, Loki throws his head back and laughs, clapping his hands together. “Yes, and I loved it,” he says. “It was delightful back then to pretend I was something different.” He drinks some more, then grows what she can only interpret as wistful. 

The last thing she wants is to pry when he’s still in that gray area he and Thor have been dragging around in since they got back. Thor’s world is very black and white -- Loki had sarcastically remarked last time that Thor was incapable of understanding metaphor or simile in much the same way as a toddler is -- whereas Loki’s existed in the vast spaces in between.

Her head is so light right now, those damn Asgardian Twilights, but she leans in close to him so they are almost nose to nose. “I have a secret. If I tell you mine, will you tell me one of yours?” Because Pepper knows he has giant bags of secrets sitting around in that handsome head of his just waiting to be opened. “My little version of a game we call truth or dare, except I know better than to dare you for anything.”

For a long, drawn-out moment, Loki considers her proposition. Like he’s searching for the least damaging thing he could tell her, weighing his emotional safety options. Pepper knows that look oh so well; she’d watched it on Tony’s face for years before he was ever ready to take the risk of loving her. “All right.” He polishes off his drink. “You first.”

 _Oh my god, I’m playing secrets games with a god of lies._ Being drunk has a lot of pluses when you’re attempting chutzpah. “OK.” Pepper clears her throat. “Tony’s building me a suit.” Loki could do a lot of things with that. Most of them not good -- if he tells Thor and Thor tells someone else before Tony’s had a chance to slowly introduce the idea of Pepper having one...or he could tell the military, or take it himself. It’s entirely possible Tony will kill her if he finds out she told. 

“You would make a great warrior,” Loki says in his silkiest tones. He practically purrs. After a long pause, Loki says, definitely not purring, “I’m not Asgardian. I’m from a race of people I was brought up to despise. I was the spoils of war, so to speak.”

Pepper’s hands fly to her mouth. “OH MY GOD.” No wonder he’s been so angry, so filled with need for vengeance, so apart from Thor. “I don’t know what to say. I’m speechless.” Loki breathes as if this is the first time he’s been able to in years. His whole body almost shudders with the exhalation. And maybe that’s...Pepper doesn’t know, but she wonders if it’s relief flickering across his face. 

Oh, it’s the booze talking or maybe he magicked her, but she hurls her arms around him again. “Being chosen, being brought into a family is supposed to be a good thing,” she says into his shoulder. “It’s supposed to be warm and joyful and all that stuff.” Pepper’s always known she was a blubbery drunk but this is worse than usual.

“I would never use your secret against you,” Loki whispers in her ear. And he kind of sinks into her hug, and anyone who says he’s incapable of caring is a big fat liar.

Pepper’s just about to ask him if he’d be okay with telling her more about it when she hears a noise and realizes Tony’s back early. 

“What. The. Hell.” Tony’s standing by the launch-pad door, glaring at Loki, who slides out of her embrace and stands. “I thought this was girls’ night, not hit on my girlfriend night.”

The grin on Loki’s face makes her stomach churn. Was this all one of his chaotic games? Ugh, she should never have drunk so much.

Tony crowds in on them and flicks the movie off. “Hey, That Girl, what exactly are you playing at here?” His eyes are shooting laser beams at Loki, who drops the smile and bows. 

“Stark. Please do not doubt your lovely partner. She was merely comforting me.”

“I’m drunk,” she says and waves at Tony from the couch. “You know how emotional I get when I’m drunk.” 

“Why emotions? What emotions are there watching chick flicks that would make you cuddle on the couch with a god of mischief?” He turns his attention to Loki. “Shouldn’t you be home polishing your helmet? And by that I mean your actual helmet with the giant horns, not wanking off.”

Pepper’s head feels glittery and sharp, like crushed glass Christmas ornaments. She has a feeling this is going to be one long night, even if she doesn’t end up with her face in the toilet.

Loki bows again, leans down to her, and whispers, “Never doubt my trust. I would not play games with you.” Had she said that thought about his playing games out loud? 

Then he vanishes and she waggles her fingers at the door. “You could have used the door again.”

Tony turns around, points outside, turns back to her, and says, “That’s where he did it, you know. Threw me out the window.” He repeats those actions and grumbles, “Just in case you forgot. Right over there. Shzooom. Out the window.”

“You don’t know what it’s like, staying here, keeping vigil. None of you _Avengers_ know what it’s like to be on the waiting end. It’s good to have a buddy system. He worries about Thor every bit as much as I worry about you.”

That seems to bring Tony up short and he opens and closes his mouth a couple times before saying, “Oh, okay. Yeah. Sorry about that.”

Pepper gets up and makes a vain attempt at gathering up the leftovers, but she’s too unsteady on her feet. Swiping her hair back behind her ears, she says, “Can we just go to bed and argue about my virtue tomorrow? I’ve had Asgardian Twilights.”

“Jesus, he made you some of those again? No wonder you’re blubbering all over each other.” He takes her hand. “We really need to do something about that drinking problem of yours.”

Pepper leans into him and smiles. The next time, maybe Loki can stay even after Tony and Thor get back. There’s just a lot they could all talk about.

**Author's Note:**

> This is for Belmanoir, for her valiant efforts to explain Loki to me.


End file.
